God Spirit

Easter

2008-03-23T03:06:00.000-07:00

Easter really has taken on two meanings. The familiar bunnies and decorated chicken eggs that bunnies have to stay up late to hide so their kids (and/or family pets) can find them the next day. That part of Easter is really a fertility rite; bunnies and eggs, symbols of fertility; it's spring, crops are planted, we hope they do well and provide an abundance come harvest time.

Easter as a religious holiday is the day Jesus rose from the dead, after having died on the cross for our sins, to give us the gift of forgiveness.

I'm not a member of any organized religion. I've explored many, and I've found truths in many. But I do feel that Jesus was a real person, and that God sent Jesus with a message of forgiveness. This isn't the message you usually get from most ministries. The message we usually get is, "if you don't do as we say you're going to hell".

If you take the time to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you find a message of Love and Forgiveness, Jesus died to give us the gift of forgiveness, but it comes to us only if we also accept the responsibility to love and forgive, to love God with all of our hearts, soul, and mind, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to forgive and not to judge.

God didn't create us just to judge us and then send us to hell. What sense would that make? God didn't create us to hate and judge each other, we are all God's creation.

We all have what we would consider flaws; we hurt each other; we do things that are harmful to other life, and that can be anything because everything, even the rocks have life. But these things aren't really flaws; for if we were all "perfect", if none of us ever did harm, then there would be no choice to love, and that wouldn't be real love at all.

God could have made us perfect beings that always put others first, always thought in terms of least harm, the best for all life; the way we know we should think, but then our love wouldn't be genuine because it wouldn't be of our choice, and to the degree any choice did exist it wouldn't mean much. How hard is it to love someone who has always treated you perfectly, always put you first? God loves us and wants us to love God, and God could make our lives free of pain and suffering, but we need to make an unbiased choice to love. God gave us what we need to live a good life, but collectively we have to make that choice.

It seems pretty obvious to me why we have to forgive. Can you imagine a bunch of people going to heaven that still hold a grudge for each other? That wouldn't be heaven at all! And we can't ask God to ban others from heaven because we won't forgive them. We are all God's creation, why would God favor one over another? We could make this planet into a heaven if only we could all get love and forgiveness into our heart, and hatred and bitterness out. I believe that will happen eventually, but I do not know if it will be within my lifetime.

God has given us what we need to live a good life if we can get those things down but they are tough lessons and humans seem to be hard learners, some more than others, and unfortunately I'm pretty high up on the hard learner curve, but it's a question of how much pain we have to cause ourselves before we learn.

I believe this is why God has us here now; to learn to love one another; to learn to forgive. It's still a choice that we have to make ourselves, but the longer I live, the more I realize that not doing so only leads to pain.

I have wondered for a long time why God requires us to live in a way that is not our nature; when God does not place that same requirement on animals. But then I thought, what animals hold a long term grudge? And animals are infinitely better at giving unconditional love, real love; than people. It's already in their nature; for us we have to learn it. But then it occurred to me but that IS our nature; our human nature. Animals are born with instincts, they can do only what those instincts drive them to do, but humans do have the unique ability to adapt our behavior and learn; it just happens that pain is an unavoidable part of that process.

So I hope this Easter; we can see that Jesus came here to help us with that process; set the most perfect example that could be set for us and told us that we are capable of the same. Even greater deeds shall you do we were told.

Still, the world is full of discordance, bitterness, hatred, uncaring, greed. But I feel optimistic in that God has done things in my life that seemed impossible; and to be sure there are still some unanswered prayers requiring miracles, but I know all things are possible to God; and all things are possible to us with love, forgiveness, and God's help.

Hopefully, as a species, we can get over the name hangups, God is God whether God is called God or Allah, or number of names used by various world religions. Language is never completely adequate for communicating, it can only use symbols and all these names are only symbols for what God actually is. When we hear our leaders suggest that God will lead us to victory against our enemies, we must remember that our enemies are equally God's creation and God does not wish any of us to harm each other.

The basic truths underlying the world's religions are really all the same; even more so when you look closely at source documents and avoid the biased interpretations of religions institutions.

We need to give thanks for each other and love and forgive each other while we are here. Whatever comes next, right now we are here, and right now each other is what we have, and God's love. If we can love and forgive each other than I think there is hope for our species and our planet and God won't have to hit the cosmic reboot button.

Ongoing Life Experiments, New Format, New Theories, etc.

2008-02-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

I decided to change the format of all my blogs for several reasons. I've learned a bit of context style sheets and a bit of graphics image manipulation which gives me an opportunity to improve the look a bit. It is my experience that if people don't like the packaging, they won't even bother to look at the contents.

I hope I don't offend people with the banner image, but the image of God portrayed in the Monty Python film, "The Holy Grail", is not far from the image that I was presented with as a child. That God image involved jealousy, anger, insensitivity, and egotism. The image of God I was brought up with made God some kind of super-human with the emotional maturity of a below average thirteen year old. Most of all, God was external. This seems to be a fairly mainstream view of God still, however, it is no longer my view.

A blog is kind of like a public diary. Because it is intended to be public, I separated my thoughts to some degree and created blogs for different areas of interest. I feared that if I did not do so, my jumble of thoughts would confuse people beyond their ability to follow. However, it creates a problem because of the relatedness of everything.

I am interested in learning as much as I can about the nature of our reality, and I view spiritual paths and scientific paths as both valid avenues. Science and spirituality both have their limitations. Only phenomena that are readily reproducible on demand really lend themselves well to the scientific method of investigation. Spirituality and direct knowledge can teach us personally, but we can't share directly with others. We can know something but when we tell someone else, we can't prove it, unless they also experience it directly.

I have come to believe the following about God; that God is forgiving, loving, and continuously creating. I've come to believe that God is inherent in everything, and that God primarily creates our reality through directed selection of random events.

Let me explain that, evolutionists hold that life evolves by random mutations and natural selection. Religious fundamentalists believe that God created everything in seven days and from that point forward, it is static. I don't believe either theory is complete. Rather, I believe that natural selection isn't mindless, that "intent" of spirit drives the outcome of random events.

In the Bible when it says that in the beginning, there was The Word; it is my belief that what is meant by that is God's intent, and God's intent seems to have been to bring about the creation of a living, loving, conscious universe, of which we are one component.

There are still a lot of aspects that are mysterious to me; in particular why suffering is necessary. Is it necessary to have suffering in order to experience love? Is it a necessary part of our learning experience? Why do we have mortal bodies? I can speculate on these matters but really I don't know.

I do feel though there is a plan, a way that everything fits together harmoniously, and that we all have an inherent feeling when we deviate from that and then things don't fit well, are not harmonious, we have problems relating to each other in the loving manner that was intended.

I heard someone say that we have to be able to make wrong choices in order to make choices, and if we couldn't make choices, didn't have free will, then we couldn't really love. Maybe that's true, but wrong choices and their consequences seem to carry a high price.

Details

2007-09-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Actually, here's a small detail I think I can share.

We can still believe in things we believed in as kids.
... from the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie

The relevance is that the physically impossible used to be regularly invoked in response to prayer when I was a child; and my question was, is it still possible as an adult; and as I was thinking about this; and actually writing about it, I heard that statement made by a character in the movie as if it were a verbal response to my question put forth to God.

If you're feeling like life is hopeless; think back to the difficult situations in life you experienced as a child. I had a few friends check out early over the past couple of years; and that's tragic because it eliminated any possibility for them to experience better times again.

Experiment Update

2007-09-18T02:45:00.000-07:00

After years of what felt like almost complete spiritual isolation, with only rare sporadic exceptions, I am finding myself flooded with communications. A conversation with God no longer seems one-way; and no, I don't have "voices in my head", but what I have been experiencing is an incredible amount of synchronicities and relevant dreams.

Unfortunately, I feel like I can not share the details right now. What I will say, if you feel lost; if you feel like there is no hope for your life; don't give up.

Jesus Doesn't Hate

2007-07-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

I went down to Alki today and there were a couple of people in a boat with religious hate messages. If one actually reads the Bible and tries to understand things in context, it becomes very clear that Jesus came here not to condemn the world but to save it, and Jesus repeatedly commands us not to judge and to love our neighbor, in fact he states after loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that to love our neighbor as ourself is the second command and that these are greater than all of the others.

I had a discussion with one of my customers recently. They told me, if you want to understand the nature of Jesus, read the book of John. Having done so I've come away with the understanding that Jesus came here not to judge but to save and his message was a message of love and not hate.

Likewise, it is not my desire to pass judgment on the people in the boat. I am sure their intentions were good if misguided. However, I would like to encourage them and others like them to go back and read the book of John and also the other gospels.

If you want to motivate people to do the right thing, I feel it is better to motivate them through love, than through hatred, threats, and intimidation. People are attracted to love and repulsed by hatred, threats, and intimidation. If you want to bring people closer to God, it must be done through love.

Matthew 7:1

Do not judge or you too will be judged.

Mark 12:31

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Luke 6:37

Do not judge, and you will not be judged.
Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

John 3:14

We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Things

2007-07-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

Well things seemed to be going well and now a bit bumpy...

But, I ran across an article that was just too weird. I won't explain, go read it for yourself.

Experiments

2007-06-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

My experiment isn't exactly a pure one, and that's the frailty of human science, in as much as we try to be objective, the observer is part of the observed system and so true objectivity is not obtainable. None the less, things seem to be turning positive to some degree but there are still significant clouds as well.

I have been trying to be more spiritually aware, I've been trying to listen to God, if that makes any sense, and I don't have a firm belief system in any particular religion but I do believe in God, so I've pursued things on different levels. I have been saying the Lords prayer, sometimes several times a day because I believe in it pretty much everything important we can ask for is there and it helps to focus my intention on being what I believe God wants me to be. I've also been experimenting with some new meditative techniques and I think there is some benefit there as well.

Some positive things have happened, I was first put on Wellbutrin for ADD symptoms last August, and it would give me about three really good days and then about a week of moderately improved functionality and then by about three weeks I'd be more or less back to baseline. They'd bump the dose up and everything would repeat. I was told that "usually" one would reach a point where the benefit would remain but for me, I reached the maximum safe dosage and increasing beyond that had the potential for inducing seizures. So then they had to wean me off that and during that time I pretty much locked up.

Then they tried Provigil, again, it was beneficial initially, but I rapidly adapted to it.

Finally, Ritalin, or at least it's generic equivalent and that has given me lasting benefit. There was a couple of initial dosage adjustments to reach a beneficial dosage, and then it has provided me with stable benefits for about three months now.

During this time I've been able to get one years tax returns out of the way, still have more to do but I'm making progress, and I've been able to get much better broadband infrastructure in place for my Internet company, Eskimo North, and that is selling reasonably well and I expect will do much better once it's well documented on the web and advertised.

So those are bright spots.

On a very negative side, there are family members with age related health issues, and I worry about how long they are going to be on this plane and I feel like I'm losing a bit of them every day, and that's really hard to deal with.

My grandparents are all dead, many of my aunts and uncles have died, many of my friends have died and I am not yet at a point where I am either comfortable with their loss or my own mortality.

One of the things I really want to do before I die is document what I've learned and what I've experienced, and share those experiences and teach other people what I've learned. I feel that a lot of people could potentially benefit from what I know but I'm not a great communicator, or at least I don't think I am.

I made the mistake of borrowing money from my father when I hit bottom and I haven't been able to pay that back yet, so in his mind I'm scum of the Earth right now, but then I think I've always been too weird for him. Even before that I always had the feeling like I was being cross-examined when I'd talk to him but then I suppose that in part has to do with the fact that part of his career was working as a detective so perhaps that's just a natural response.

I wonder too though if being adopted isn't part of it, that being genetically unrelated, and different, is something that we are both unconsciously aware of. I was adopted when my parents didn't think they could have a child of their own and then my adoptive mother did get pregnant and they had my sister.

So I don't know, I pray for help with this but so far it doesn't feel like that help has been forthcoming.

One of the things that has always been puzzling to me is the nature of the Father/Son/Spirit relationship, it's something that has brought me disfavor with clergy I've asked because they always have pat answers that seem not to make sense. One of my customers made the simple statement, if you want to know about Jesus, read the book of John, and I've been doing that recently.

It's funny too because I've read through the Bible when I was younger, but now re-reading the book of John I am getting a lot out of it that I didn't before. One of the things I am finding through John is that Jesus is as I had felt Jesus was, someone who was loving not condemning which seems very contrary to the teachings of most churches that I've been exposed to, save for one, and that one wasn't successful at raising enough money to continue operating where they did.

I do wish I could read in the original language because I have read so much about inaccurate translations, and having learned foreign languages I understand that there are things that just aren't translatable. Languages do not allow us to fully express everything that is possible, at least not any one language, they all have words that have nuances that just do not directly translate. I learned Swedish and I found myself thinking things in Swedish that I could not directly translate into English; and not even indirectly entirely. There just weren't words to convey some of the nuances. I've been learning Chinese, and I am finding the same true of Chinese to the limited degree that I know it, I am not even close to fluent yet.

So I have to think that languages so far removed from English in time, there are going to be many things that just aren't accurately translated. I've had an interest in mythology for a long time and one of the things I find is that most stories in the Bible, there is a very similar story in mythology that predates the books of the Bible, but with one significant difference, the earlier versions are always polytheistic, while the Biblical versions in modern translations are mostly monotheistic though there are still some plural references to Gods. The similarity of the stories makes it hard to believe the Biblical versions didn't derive from earlier polytheistic versions and I've been told that references to God in Hebrew is mostly plural, but since I don't know Hebrew I can't confirm that myself.

Anyway, what I am learning about Jesus from John seems less "western" that the teachings of many churches or even other books of the Bible. I try to apply what I'm learning but I'm still not real good at it, still I am beginning to see there are many real truths present.

Easter, Judas and Jesus

2007-04-07T22:48:00.000-07:00

God so loved us that he gave Jesus Christ to die for our sins and to rise
again from the dead. We received the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life as gifts.

It would be nice if it were this simple but I think it comes with a responsibility, part of the Lords prayer:

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

While Jesus offers us redemption, it is our responsibility to forgive our fellow man.

The recent discovery of the book of Judah, and the knowledge that Jesus not only knew Judah would betray him to the Romans but in fact commanded him to do so, what that tells me is that he suffered and died knowingly and voluntarily for us, you can't love more than that.

I don't understand the whole son of God relationship; and actually for the first several hundred years neither did early Christians as churches disagreed, the council of Nicea dictated the meaning three hundred years after the fact. But I know Jesus loved enough to suffer and die.

I believe a prefect world eludes us only for our inability to love and forgive in this manner. I think instinctively we know this, that's the attraction in a pet, the desire for that unconditional love, and I think if we could all give that, and know we have it, the world would heal itself, at least that's my hope.

Chi, Qi, Ki, Prana, Pneuma

2007-04-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

The life energy, Chinese call it Chi or Qi, it's the same word really, pronounced "Chee", just a matter of what form of Romanization is used, Japanese call it Ki, Hindus call it Prana, Greeks called it Pneuma.

In all languages, it equates to breath or wind, we don't know where it comes from or where it goes, it flows. We breath it in, and if we choose we can become aware of it's diffusing into our tissues. It does seem to be intimately associated with breath or air or oxygen, it's flow affected by our breathing, and yet, it is not the same.

It's noticeably missing from Western religious traditions. I find myself wondering what mention of it may have existed in those books of the Bible that the Council of Nicea deleted.

I've had a number of lucid dreams in which I've traveled to other planetary bodies. Among them, Mars and Earth's moon. In both circumstances, I was aware of breath.

On the moon, knowing there was no air, in spirit form I could still breath. I was amazed by this but I could breath freely and easily. I know, if I took my body along for the ride, that would not be possible. Likewise for Mars, although there is some air, it is mostly carbon dioxide and has a thickness 1% that of Earth's atmosphere. But still I could breath easily there too.

I have seen demonstrations of what martial artists that refer to themselves as chi masters can do. I can't say for certain that a portion thereof is not illusion, but it was impressive.

I believe there is a reality to the existence "qi", and I think it's more than something that gives life to us, I think it is a part of God, or of God and directs the evolution of the entire universe.

Near Death Experiences

2007-04-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

Near death experiences fascinate me. People so often describe the experience as more lucid than normal waking life, super conscious, as if they had awoken from a dream and life had been the dream.

My mother tells me that she came home from work to find me passed out on the floor as the result of an asthma attack. I have no memory relating to that at all, not even that it happened.

It is the super conscious aspect of it that I find particularly intriguing. I'm not sure exactly what it is that is the basis for our own judgment of self-lucidity. Is our judgment impaired, or is the mind, freed of the brain, able to perceive more clearly?

While I haven't had any near death experiences that I can remember, I have had to two waking out of body experiences. In neither of those did I have any sense of super consciousness. My awareness of my surroundings seemed actually pretty ordinary.

Out of Body...

2007-04-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

On Coast to Coast AM, guest William Buhlman talks about out of body experiences. It's interesting to me because I've had two myself as well as many lucid dreams and I certainly haven't come to the same conclusions that Mr. Buhlman has.

At first I was thinking to my self, this guy is full of it... But then I got to thinking about how radically different the two experiences I have and given that I don't know that his aren't entirely different than either of mine.

He makes the statement that once you've had one you know you continue past your body. I certainly can't claim this on the basis of an out of body experience.

With the lucid dreams, I know for sure I can get information distant from my body because I have tested this by going some place in a lucid dream that I had not been to, writing down what I saw there when I woke up, then driving there and verifying what I saw matched, and it did.

Where lucid dreams are concerned, some might come to the conclusion that consciousness exists independently of one's physical body, however, from my perspective that only proves non-locality, that is that I can observe time and space not local to my body.

With the two out of body experiences I had, which were radically different from one another, I have had no such opportunity to test whether or not I can even obtain valid information.

In the first out of body experience, after meeting up with someone meditating in a basement, because I didn't want to travel great distances alone, we went to Alpha Centauri, which in this experience had a 4th planet capable of sustaining life. The specific goal was to go to another planet that had life.

The planet was larger than Earth, maybe 3-4 times larger, but like Earth it was a planet that the majority was covered with oceans and there were continents that had a very similar appearance to earths, that is not to say the same specific shapes or arrangements, but a similar land to water ratio, and similar over all form.

I observed the planet from out in space, at a distance similar to that of a geosynchronous satellite above Earth. When you see photographs of Earth from that distance, or even from the shuttles low earth orbit, you can see the atmosphere is very thin, just a sliver on the edge of the planet, but this planet it was substantial, much much thicker.

Still, much like our atmosphere it had water clouds and storm systems, but owing to the thickness of the atmosphere, it had a real three dimensional look.

I did not see a moon, at least not a large moon like Earth. Nor did I see polar ice. I've heard that without our moon earth would not be so hospitable to life because the polar inclination and with it the seasons, would be unstable. However the thick atmosphere on this Alpha Centauri 4th planet may negate that issue buy distributing heat making seasons non-existent.

I was then called back, had to return to my body; and break up a fight between the kids. I have no control over when these happens, the first one was spontaneous when I was trying a relaxation meditation I had just learned. I've repeated the meditation but without the same effect.

The second one happened when I was first put on a drug for ADD, and it was much less pleasant, accompanied by intense buzzy vibration feeling like being electrocuted, and a sound of 10,000 files buzzing around my head, and I kept going in/out of my body, and when I was out I was totally out of control, out in deep space somewhere and no control over where I went.

Still, I'm hoping that eventually a planet finder telescope system will be launched and determine what, if any, planetary systems exist there. So maybe someday it will be verified whether or not such a planet exists orbiting Alpha Centauri.

I knew nothing about Alpha Centauri prior other than the fact that it was close as stars go, 4.35 light years. After this experience I wanted to know more about Alpha Centauri, was it a viable terrestrial planet host? Well, it turns out incredibly that Alpha Centauri is incredibly Sun like. It is 1.09 solar masses (9%) heavier, but slightly older, such that the temperature spectral character of the light it gives off are identical. The orbits of Alpha Centauri A and B are sufficiently distanced that planets out to about the distance of the asteroid belt around Earth could have stable orbits around Alpha Centauri. So very likely Alpha Centauri could host life bearing planets.

So it's interesting to me that given the tremendous variability of stars in our galactic neighborhood, that Alpha Centauri should be so nearly a sun clone.

Bottom line though is that out of body experiences haven't proven anything to me in terms of my own continuance after I die physically, and neither have lucid dreams, so I'm not sure how these people come to the conclusions they do.

Experiment

2007-04-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

So far so far... My prayer experiment, I feel it's kind of mixed. Not an overnight success, not an overnight failure. Seems to be a general upswing but still some significant challenges.

My Religious Beliefs

2007-03-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

My beliefs are in a state of constant flux and revision so if I write something a week from now that is different, it only means that I've changed my mind about something. I don't feel like my beliefs are complete and they really are in a pretty heavy state of flux.

But as I mentioned in a previous post, I would consider myself an unorthodox Christian. Here is why.

I believe God and his creation (us, the entire universe) are not separate either from God in absolute terms, though I do think we build a kind of psychic barrier, or from each other. So in the end, whatever we do to each other we are also doing to ourselves.

I believe that because of our own embarrassment over harm we've done others or to protect ourselves from perceived harm, we build a kind of psychic barrier that cuts us off from each other and God.

I believe the story of Genesis involves the building of this barrier. The fig leaf, the hiding from God, is, like most of the Bible, symbolic, it's not the nakedness in a physical sense. It's being exposed emotionally that we are uncomfortable with.

Now there are some people throughout history who have been able to tear that barrier down. They have only been able to do so by leading absolutely exemplary life, treating everyone and everything with love and respect, and I believe these people were exceedingly rare, and Jesus went farther than any others in being willing to sacrifice his life.

Because of this I think Jesus was more connected, perfectly so, and that that is what is meant by the reference to Jesus as the Son of God. We are all sons of God, but the rest of us are isolated, because of our own sins.

The connectivity, if it existed, we would all communicate with each other perfectly, we'd feel what each other felt, know each others thoughts, and that's why we build this barrier, that is too frightening.

Further, we'd see everything in terms of the whole, and greed, and disrespect for the environment and other life forms, and all sorts of other problems wouldn't exist.

But the reality is that we are isolated, and we can't lower that barrier unless we can feel that when our sins are known we will still be loved. That can't happen without forgiveness, and there I think was the true message of Jesus.

Jesus was not, I'll die for you so you can be a massive screw-up and it's ok, Jesus was, I'm setting an example for you, you must be willing to forgive others even up to including those who would take your very life, and you must be willing to give it for each other.

The thing too is that we can only do our own part, and that's hard. We're all connected, so we all sink or swim together. We can only do the best we can and try to love others and try to forgive.

I believe this was what the message of Jesus was, prior to the Council of Nicea. Prior to the council, exactly what was meant by "Son of God", was not universally agreed to between churches, and that was one of the things the council, by decree, settled. But I don't believe they settled it correctly, I believe they settled for an agreement that would give the church the most power.

That's just my take and it might be different next week. But as we approach Easter, I think it's worth considering. When you think about Christ, nailed to a cross, waiting to die, and having done so willingly, think about what you think was intended. Just accept a gift, or accept a responsibility that goes with it, to forgive others.

Now all that said, it feels like to me that with all the evil that's in my heart, not to say all evil, there is some good there too, but the evil, can it be purged without ending my own existence?

I know the final outcome, when thy kingdom come, there will be no room for evil. And I want that kingdom to come but I do fear it may mean the death of me.

Now this part of my religious beliefs relate to Christianity fairly directly but not in an orthodox manner. Still, more different is that not only do I not believe we are separate from each other at the fundamental level, but we're not separate from God either except for this barrier we put up.

In the beginning there was the word. In the beginning there was no planets, no atmosphere, nothing to write on, so what is meant by "the word"? I think it meant intent. It was God's thought, God's intent, and that's all that was needed for everything to come into existence. But I don't believe God's intent created everything, I believe God's intent >is< everything.

There is a lot I don't understand though, I won't pretend otherwise, and it's all that I don't understand that is the reason I remain flexible and still revise my beliefs.

The whole free-will explanation that mainstream Christians give as the explanation for why suffering must exist, sorry it makes no sense to me. I do believe that most suffering is self-induced, but we seem driven to induce that suffering. I don't understand why that is but I'm certain it's true.

Anyway those are my thoughts on my religious views, not entirely complete but then my beliefs aren't entirely complete.

Now, with Easter coming up, how did symbols of fertility, rabbits known for their proclivity for rapid reproduction, and eggs, come to be associated with the death and resurrection of Christ? And why would a bunny want to steal and hide chicken eggs? Rabbits and chickens occupy such different ecological niches that I wouldn't think there would be much competition between them.

Life Experiment

2007-03-26T00:16:00.000-07:00

I am trying a seemingly minor experiment in my life. The experiment is very simple. Always, when I go to bed, before I go to sleep I say prayers. My prayers include the Lords Prayer, and a little one that I learned as a child asking God to take my soul if I should die in my sleep, and then one about life's present concern usually asking guidance.

Now when I was young, it seemed like prayers were answered, maybe not right away, but sometimes they were right away. But they always seemed to be answered, occasionally the answer was "no" however. And example of a "no" being when my father moved out. I prayed for his return but it didn't happen.

But in my later years as an adult the general trends in my life seem to have not been positive. It occurred to me that maybe it's because of when I pray. After the day is done, when I'm going to sleep, and then by the morning what I asked has been forgotten about and no longer in my heart or head.

So I'm trying an experiment, and that is to say the Lord's prayer in the morning, and try to think about what it means throughout the day. The idea being to keep it present with me and hopes that will help me find direction.

Now my religious views are kind of strange, I would consider myself an unorthodox Christian, in as much as I believe Christ was real, but my perceptions of Christ and what was intended by his presence here are not congruent with mainstream Christianity. I'll elaborate that is a separate post.

Sadistic God?

2007-03-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Last night Art Bell had Maurice Cotterell as a guest on Coast to Coast AM.

His theories are many but one in particular is that through suffering we purify our hearts, and by purifying our hearts we allow the impurities of our soul to "drain out" through our hearts, and then we can return to God with a pure soul where he uses that pure energy to grow.

I believe in my heart this not to be true. I don't want to believe in a sadistic God for it would leave little purpose to life.

Sometimes the circumstances of my own life and those that I care about though make me wonder. I can't feel as rock solid about that as I would like.

Every night before I sleep I say the lords prayer. I keep trying to remember that prayers are not always answered instantly.

On the plus side, Maurice Cotterel also believes that the sun causes schizophrenia and I guess that would explain why Seattle, the city with the least sunshine of any major city in the continental United States, is such a sane place. Thank God the Aurora bridge is here, because if it were some place like, oh, Phoenix, the body count would doubtlessly be tremendous.

God's Plan

2007-03-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

I wonder if we did everything right, if we loved our fellow man, and all living creatures, and all of God's creation, and we loved Jesus and God, and never sinned, if we did all of these things would there still be human suffering?

Right now if we look at our world, we can see that much human suffering is of human origin. The starvation in Africa for example, enough food is grown world wide to feed everything but it's not distributed where it's needed.

All the people who have died or been mutilated in war, the people we killed in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos to prevent communism from dominoing, (and what exactly would have happened if it had), or the people who have died in Iraq for oil company profits, suffering that didn't need to be.

At home all the cancer deaths that have resulted from various preventable things, cigarettes, bad food additives, and alll of the disease we could cure or at least better managed if the resources weren't wasted on are constitutes another huge group of preventable suffering.

I guess the big question I'm trying to get at, Does Gods plan require human suffering?

If we did everything according to God's plan, would we still have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, and other natural disasters? And if we did would they still harm us or would we somehow get out of the way?

The dreams I see of a changed earth in the Pacific Northwest, there are always two versions, and one version there is a lot of suffering, and the other changes still occur but they're gradual, gentle, give us warning to get out of the way and avoid harm.

The Nature of Good and Evil...

2007-02-22T21:43:00.000-08:00

I am confused about the nature of good and evil. Is it absolute or relative? A hungry cat is chasing a mouse. To the cat the mouse represents a good thing, a meal. To the mouse, the cat represents pain, torture, and death, evil. In human terms good or evil often seems to depend upon the social context. Is evil the absence of good as dark is the absence of light, or is it it's own entity? For example if light and dark were separate things then you could have dark bulbs that give off dark.

I had an experience as a teenager in which I was trying an experiment that allegedly could capture the voices of spirits on tape. The modern equivalent is referred to as EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomena. In the modern version using a tape recorder or digital record, a recording of the ambient is made in an area thought likely to have ghosts or spirits such as a mausoleum or cemetery. Then the recording is played back and listened to for voices other than the experimenters.

When I tried it, I was about thirteen, the protocol was somewhat different, instead of recording ambient noises, a recording was made of white noise, the sound you hear when you tune an FM radio or television to an unused channel. Then the recording is played back and listened to for voices.

I followed the protocol and played the tape back, and I didn't hear anything but I felt something come into the room which was incredibly cold and chilling, and challenging. I thought I could beat it but I believe it's hung around and caused problems for me throughout life.

My experience would tell me that evil is absolute not relative, and an entity in and of itself, not merely an absence of good. Maybe what I'm calling evil isn't though maybe the entity is just like a psychic cat and I the psychic mouse. It seems evil to me because it's drawing my life force. I think that is why it felt so cold; it was sucking the energy right out of me.

I've done that to other people and I know it's not a good thing to do. Every time I eat meat I feel like I've stolen something that belonged to the animal I am consuming. I feel I should become a vegetarian but then I feel drawn to eat meat like a smoker to a cigarette.

Suffering

2007-01-25T04:04:00.000-08:00

I wish I could pretend to understand some things but there are some things that just do not make sense to me.

We've had some wonderful neighbors for the 23 years we've been here. They were elderly when we moved in. Last night the woman of the couple died. I do not know exactly how old they are but her husband told us that if she had lived until the end of the month, they would have been married 87 years.

To me that is awesome beyond awesome. After all of those years I feel like God should have taken them at the same time. It seems nothing short of cruel to part them after almost 87 years together.

There are a plethora of religious sites on the web that purport to answer the question, "Why does God permit suffering?".

I am not satisfied with the answers they provide. Man is given free will. Man must be held responsible for man's actions. These neighbors were the nicest people you could ever hope to know. This was not the result of "mans actions", this was the result of mortality. We don't live forever.

I'm afraid it just doesn't make sense to me nor does it seem just. This guy is left alone at over 100, after 87 years of marriage, I just don't get it. Personally, I do believe in God, but I can't make sense of this.

Humility Lessons

2007-01-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

I really dislike the occasional humility lessons God throws my way. It's like being tazed by God.

2007

2007-01-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

I am hoping, with reservations, that 2007 is a year when good prevails over evil.

My reservations are based upon the fact that I'm not sure where I stand in the good/evil continuum.

Still, I'd like the world to be a better place with a good future for my children.

God and Evil

2006-12-31T04:41:00.000-08:00

My understanding of God is, to say the least, inadequate and incomplete. Even less understood than God is my understanding of Evil.

I am convinced Evil is a real force, whether it's name is Lucifer, Satin, The Devil, or even just an impersonal something that seems bent on causing misery and suffering, I am convinced that, whatever it is, it is a real force.

Faces in the pictures of the 9/11 event, I found these very convincing. I know people see bunnies in clouds and demonic images in random noise. When I saw this particular image in the paper it hit me hard and instantly.

I realized this was not as it seemed. This was not crazy Islamic terrorists bringing down buildings to force us out of the middle east. This event would be used to justify our killing people in the middle east. The force behind it is incredibly evil. It wants us to die or be in fear of dying, to suffer, or be in fear of suffering. It wants to control us. Evil seems to thrive on this kind of negative energy, hatred and fear.

There are many reasons to think that the 9/11 event was not of Arab origin, that it was contrived by people who really run the world, people often referred to as "The Illuminati", though anyone that would do this and use it to commit genocide are anything but illuminated.

The CIA met with Osama Bin Laden in a hospital one month prior to this event. Two weeks prior, the regular security force was removed from the building and there is a strong indication that explosives were planted. Visually, if you've ever seen a controlled implosion, watching those buildings fall was a classic example. There is no known explanation for the collapse of a nearby office building. It happened that Enron records were stored in the Twin Towers. Citibank collected millions of dollars of insurance money when another building collapsed without explanation. The scene was cleaned up so rapidly that the opportunity to collect forensic evidence was extremely limited. Some people received warning calls before the events. People on many floors were locked in and unable to reach the stairs to escape. Others were told to remain in the building while it was on fire.

I could go on but you all know how to use Google, so I will not. The aftermath is what is important. George Bush used this as an excuse to invade Iraq even though the CIA had indicated that Iraq had no part in this, the hijackers that were identified came from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Even so, I do not believe George Bush was involved in the initial plot; he was reading to children in a school and when told of the news froze up for some period of time, total emotional overload, not something someone involved would have experienced, but he certainly took advantage of the opportunity it presented.

I do not know who is behind this event but I do know it was a force that is incredibly evil. It is, I think, even more important to understand this force than it is to understand God. Know thy enemy.

Sadam is dead, there are no weapons of mass destruction, let's get out of Iraq and get on with life. We've sacrificed enough of our children already and we've murdered enough Iraqi's.

At one time I thought the invasion of Iraq was about obtaining oil or securing US access to the middle eastern oil reserves. At one time Henry Kissinger stated, "Oil is too valuable of a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs.", and I believe Gorge Bush was acting upon that statement.

Then I discovered we were swimming in the stuff. The United States has enormous oil reserves. They aren't the easiest to get at but they are huge. We have a super giant field in the gulf of Mexico, bigger even than Ghwar in Saudi Arabia. Even though this was publically touted as a recent discovery, Exxon has known about it for years. We have another super giant field deep under Utah and Colorado. This oil, like the abiotic oil in Russia, requires drilling more than 20,000 feet and through granite bedrock to get at, but it is this type of oil that allowed Russia, in 2005, to surpass Saudi Arabia and become the worlds largest oil producer and exploratory wells have been drilled and proven it's existence. We have enormous tar sands and oil shale, bitumen reserves. And if that weren't enough we have huge reserves of heavy and super-heavy crude like that in Venezuela in California.

All of these US sources are either relatively expensive to produce ($12-$15 a barrel verses around $3.50 a barrel in Iraq, and $8 in Saudi Arabia) or to refine because heavy crude like that in California requires additional cracking to render lighter hydrocarbon products useful in gasoline and diesel fuels. Sour crude (sulfur rich) requires additional refining to remove the sulfur to comply with environmental laws.

With the world market at around $70 per barrel, these sources are more than marginally profitable. If middle eastern producers freely produce their oil and dump it on the market, it will drive the market prices down reducing profits for the oil companies. Iraq wasn't about stealing oil, it was about reducing production. They did steal what oil was produced, but the production is now half of what it was before the war. Keeping production at this lower level is the reason we remain in Iraq.

This is evil, the terminator seed is another. The terminator seed was developed to force farmers to buy seed every year rather than saving some from last years crop. This drives up the price of food for everyone and in poorer countries it drives the cost up so high it is not affordable and people starve as a result.

The way the nuclear industry is managed is evil. We could have a safe nuclear program producing no long term nuclear waste, but ample clean electrical energy. Instead we have an unsafe industry, producing large quantities of long term radioactive waste, and inadequate quantities of clean electricity.

Why? Because if we adopted reactors capable of burning up actinides, they would extract about thirty times more energy from the same fuel in the process of burning up transuranics that would otherwise become a 20,000 year storage problem. Cheney has interests in coal and uranium mining. This would make his mines essentially worthless.

In Iran, they have developed a bacterial agent which is capable of extracting uranium from low grade ores at a cost of one one-hundredth of that of conventional methods. I believe it is for this reason the Bush administration does not want Iran to develop their own fuel cycle technology. By making very low grade ores commercially viable fuel sources, holders of mineral rights to high grade ores would see an appreciable devaluation of those holdings.

If you don't believe oil prices are being manipulated, then why is it that when Republicans control government, the price of oil drops just prior to elections and then rebounds afterwards, but when Democratically control government, the price of oil increases prior to elections and drops afterwards? I think the answer is obvious, oil companies prefer the hands off don't give a shit about the environment approach of the Republicans.

The damage to our fellow human beings, other life forms, and the planet as a whole, is evil. But evil is more than just companies wanting to do as they please without regards to the impact it has on everyone and everything else, whatever this evil force is, it wants to cause fear, hatred, and suffering. It's not just uncaring, it's malicious.

Mostly, we can just see the effects of evil and deduce some of it's properties. It's true nature is hidden, but one thing I am sure of, it thrives on the fear and hatred and to combat it we must stop allowing it to manipulate us into hating and being in fear, starve it to death.

What is God?

2006-12-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

I do not believe we can truly understand what God is, a drop of water can not encompass an ocean and attempting to understand God I think is analogous to this. However, we can come to understand some aspects of God's nature through our experience and the recorded experiences of other human beings.

And to that end I felt that I wanted to relate some of my experiences and what I've learned from them.

Some background is necessary, when I was a younger child say around nine or ten years of age, my mother used to believe it beating us with a stick when we mis-behaved or were disrespectful. Specifically, we had a tree that grew these very flexible sticks that she would cut off and call "switches" and she would wail on our buttocks with them leaving welts and causing much stinging.

This created a great deal of fear for me when I was very young. So much so that I would have nightmares of locking myself in the bathroom and a switch trying to get me through cracks between the door and the floor or the door and the wall.

My mother was very strict at that age which contrasts greatly with how she was as I entered my teenage years (at that point quite the opposite, she became very lax).

One of the big things for her was when us kids went somewhere and were told to be back at a particular time, she was very strict about that time, and arriving three minutes late meant a switching (beating with stick).

We lived on the corner of 15th NE and 90th Street in Seattle, and about a mile to the north there was a bridge over a ravine. At that time the area below the bridge was undeveloped woods with Thornton creek running through the ravine. Myself and some of my friends used to go down there to play.

The woods had vines and on some trees ropes had been tied to branches. There was one portion of the creek that was deep and a tree near it had a rope that could swing out over the creek and in the summer we'd swing out and drop into the creek to cool off (and very cold it was). We'd play like we were in a Tarzan movie there, climbing trees and swinging from vines and ropes.

My mother would have dinner promptly at six and we were always to be home by six, and if we weren't the switch loomed. But being kids, it was easy to lose track of time while we were playing and occasionally, I would stop and look at my watch and see that it said it was after six. I would pray to be spared the switch and run home trying to minimize the damage, and somehow I would arrive home just before six even though I had left after six. This wasn't just a function of my watch being off, for it too would indicate that it was just before six when I arrived home.

The skeptical would say I just mis-read my watch, but this happened many times. I am convince it meant that God can answer prayers even if it requires violating physical laws of causality as we know them.

When I was in junior high school I had an interesting incident, although this one didn't involve prayer, it did seem to involve at the very least temporary suspension of ordinary physics.

I am a night person and always have been, not an early waker, and I used to watch television until 2am, and then I would have to get up and be to school by 8am. Invariably, I would not wake up until 7:30, spend twenty minutes getting ready, and then run two miles to school. This was not as hard as it might seem because the school was located in a big hole, and I lived on top of a hill, so the trip to school was downhill all the way making it easy to run. The downside was the walk home was a bitch.

The route I would take would be to run from my house on 15th and 90th down 90th to 17th Ave, then go north on 17th avenue to 94th, from there I would cut through a park and the playground of Sacajawea, the elementary school I went to, to arrive at 96th street and 20th Ave, then I'd go down 20th to 98th St, then down 98th street to Lake City way. I'd cross Lake City way at a light controlled cross-walk there, then go north on Lake City way to Fischer Ave, which went to Ravenna which I would follow to 115th Street which was the street my junior high school was on.

On the initial run down 90th, about fifty feet uphill from 17th Ave there was a fire hydrant. Each day, I would do a long jump at the fire hydrant, and each day I would achieve not an abnormal distance.

Except one day something happened. I felt I had gotten a particularly good launch and so I pulled my legs tightly up under my body to minimize air resistance and try to maximize the distance of the jump, but as I reached the apex of the jump something weird happened, I did not start falling down, instead I remained at approximately the same height but as the hill was falling away below me. I kept getting higher and higher with respect to the ground. I traveled in this manner all the way across 17th Ave and continued down 90th street.

At this point I was getting quite high in the air and I began to fear that either I would continue going up into the sky never to be seen again or when I did come down it was gonna hurt because I was up so high. As soon as I had that thought it was as if gravity gently resumed and I came down in a slow controlled manner and didn't hurt myself. Now I was quite a way down 90th from 17th and had to walk back up the hill to 17th Ave to continue my run to school. The total length of the jump I would estimate at being around 100 feet.

I tried to reproduce this every day after that when I ran to school, but never again did anything out of the ordinary happen, just normal distance long jumps like I had before.

I'm not sure all what to make of this experience, perhaps that God can lift and carry us if necessary, or perhaps that the laws of physics are not as immutable as we normally perceive. I am sure this is a lesson that will have relevance at some point in my life, but at present I still do not understand exactly what it meant.

In my experience, God seems to answer prayers inconsistently. Some say God answers all prayers it's just that sometimes the answer is "No", but I feel that to say that is just playing with semantics. But it does seem that answers tend to come when it's most important for them to. When I'm hurting the most, when I'm threatened the most, when someone I love is threatened the most.

My fathers wife got esophageal cancer diagnosed as stage four. I was very worried about my father being left alone, especially as he is getting up in years and has had a few health problems himself. The five year survival rate for this type of cancer is 3%.

I prayed for her survival, and it has been just about five years. Now, they have not cured the cancer entirely, cancer indicators still show that it is present in her body; however, they have been able to control it with chemotherapy and she has been able to maintain a reasonable quality of life throughout the process. I feel that this is a prayer that has been answered.

On the other hand, this year has been a shit storm if ever there was one. In a little more than a year, my mothers husband died from lung cancer and my mother became very depressed and stopped eating. I had prayed for his survival too but it did not happen. She lost 35 lbs and is way under weight as a result. She stopped losing weight after several months but still a year later hasn't regained it. Then a friend of mine visiting from Antarctica, who did blasting and drilling there and had wintered over and had been there eight years, died while here in Seattle visiting in an apartment fire. He had just shown us pictures of a house he had bought in New Zealand where he had planned to retire.

Then in April, an employee and friend committed suicide. Later our dog developed cancer and died. All of these things really contributed to functionality problems for me. I'm already prone to depression and this really pushed me over the edge. I also had ADD symptoms. I got treatment for these things and I was doing better near the end of September and working on getting things back in order, then my nineteen year old daughter left with a boyfriend for Utah with eight hours notice. To put it mildly I was crushed, a couple of more months of non-functionality followed.

I was pretty much maxed on the dosage of Welbutrin I was on for depression and ADD and increasing that dosage further wasn't really a safe option, too much can induce seizures.

I know that two factors are important to combat depression more than anything else, physical exercise and socialization. This was difficult for me to do because my daughter had always accompanied us to the gym and swimming, and when I'd go I'd really miss her presence and end up breaking down and crying, it just was no good. Most of my friends were on-line friends so there wasn't much opportunity to in person socialization since they were scattered all over the world. Most of my friends that were local had died, moved away, or just changed so much we didn't share interests during the time I had been raising children.

I prayed for help and I received it. I was pointed to a number of resources and ultimately did meet some people including someone who could accompany us exercising and that really made it more doable again.

Still, I have a lot of financial issues resulting from the time I really was not functional, I'm trying to work through those now but it's very difficult. I'm praying for help but so far it hasn't come.

I know I have not lived the type of life I should and I feel perhaps this is why I'm not yet getting the help that I need. All the pieces of the puzzle have to fit the plan and I've resisted and gone my own route and I think that has caused me these problems.

Adding to these difficulties has been A/C problems at the co-location facility which resulted in some equipment problems, not one but two dead washing machines, and during the recent windstorm a tree limb came through our roof and ceiling.

The mental issues, particularly the ADD, have made things like taxes reports problematic and I am behind in those.

It seemed like when I was a kid and got in trouble, prayer resulted in predictable and immediate results for the most part. One exception to that was when my parents divorced, I prayed for my fathers return but it was not to be.

But as an adult, when answers come they seem to be not immediate and not so predictable, kind of like we're supposed to experience more turmoil and difficulty as adults, although I know there are plenty of children in the world living under absolutely hellish conditions and I do not understand why that is permitted by a loving God.

But then sometimes love is tough. When my daughter left, I felt pain like I never had before. It was painful when my oldest son left, but then he only moved about ten miles away and once I was invited to his apartment and welcomed in his space I felt okay with it. But my daughter moved 900 miles away and really seems bent on total independence and even if I had the financial means to visit I don't feel like I would be welcomed. For some reason, she seems to feel that she can't "live her life" if I'm there interfering with it.

So this was very difficult for me. But after a time the reason for it was revealed to me in a flash of insight. You see many years prior, about thirteen years prior, I had a real bad flu with a very high temperature. This was during the inaugural day storm and we had no power.

I went to sleep with 103F fever, and in my sleep I went to God, and God spoke to me and told me I could stay with him then, or I could go back and complete a mission but my success was not guaranteed. I did not know what the mission was, but I knew I had young children and a wife that needed me so I chose to go back. And when I made that choice I woke up in my bed drenched in sweat, my fever was completely gone, 98.6F, and I felt fine.

So 13 year pass, and one night my daughter tells me a boy is coming from Utah for her and she hasn't made up her mind to go or not, and in the end I told her she had to follow her heart, knowing it would take her away from me. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but then when I'm in the room with the entertainment center, Raymond is playing and he says out of the blue, "mission accomplished", and instantly I knew this had been the mission I had been assigned during that inaugural day storm, I had to raise her and at the appropriate time let her go.

I was given an understanding that this process was like that of birth. Women have a baby grow in their womb, for nine months it is inside their body growing, but there comes a time when the baby must be born. It can no longer grow within the confines of the mother. They say the process of birth is the most painful thing a woman goes through and afterwards there is often postpartum depression, still, it was necessary for the baby to continue to grow. And a woman doesn't stop loving her child when it is born, if anything that love increases.

I was present at the birth of all of my children and it was a beautiful thing, the most joyess moments in my life.

I came to understand that this was analogous. It was extremely painful for me, but it was absolutely necessary for my daughters growth. She could no longer grow within the confines of my space, she had to have her own space in which to grow. And she has grown, when I talk to her the difference in the apparent level of maturity is striking. She seems happy, she hadn't been happy for a long time. So it is good for her but it was painful for me.

After she did go I whined a lot and made a total ass of myself, but at least I told her to follow her heart when that was what she needed to do.

So I felt after this I had hoped there would either be some recuperation time or I'd be told what I should be doing next, but neither has happened. Instead I'm in financial and if I don't get some tax reports in soon, legal trouble.

I'm still praying for help but I wish I could say I feel 100% confident that it is coming but I am feeling very frightened right now.

Well, I'm just telling you about these things because they relate to my personal experience of God and how God has acted in my life.

What I want out of life now is financial and emotional security and to be placed into a position where I can help others and make a positive impact in the lives of others. I really don't care in what field, if it's in the computer field, or radio really the first thing I loved doing, or photography, a hobby of mine, or writing, something I've come to enjoy doing, or just something totally unrelated.

I just don't want to have to live in fear anymore and I want to feel like I'm doing something right with my life which I feel I haven't done a very good job of up to this point.

My Religous Beliefs

2006-12-28T02:32:00.000-08:00

My religious views don't seem to fit well with mainstream religions. To a degree I think that mainstream religions miss the true nature of God because what God is is so incredibly encompassing that God simply is not comprehendable by man in God's totality. I will readily admit that I don't understand what God is, but I have some ideas of what God is not, and I know that something I would call God exists.

I am actively seeking God in my life, but I am not willing to allow someone else to jam their belief system down my throat. I have found this to be a real difficulty because on the one hand, I do want to serve the purpose God has intended for my life, but on the other hand, people who, while trying to be helpful, have tried to force their belief systems upon me and I've felt them to be totally wrong and so have been unwilling to accept them.

I was raised in the Christian faith but not any specific denomination. I was forced to go to Sunday school in my youth, occasionally to attend regular church services, and to participate in a program called CYC (Christian Youth Club or some such).

The church I went to Sunday school at, I don't even remember the denomination but the denomination wasn't important to my parents it was just a function of it being physically close, a three block walk from our home. I had really mixed feelings about this church because on the one hand, the people there impressed me as sincere and caring, but on the other they impressed me as being clueless and dogmatic.

Also, when church services were not in progress, and classes were not in progress, the doors of this church would still be open, and I would sometimes go in and just sit quietly and ask questions of God, and I really did feel the presence of God there.

Later some turds took fire extinguishers and vandalized the church and after that they locked it up, still I felt like God were present on the grounds, and even when I no longer attended, I would often go to the grounds when I felt I needed to talk to God.

I would ask questions of the religious figures there regarding aspects of the Bible that I did not understand and it rapidly became clear to me they didn't understand either. But what was most disturbing was their attitude that it wasn't important to understand it, only to accept it.

I'm a person who really wants to understand things, and demands logical consistency exists otherwise I can't feel that I do understand. After a while I, became frustrated and then started becoming disruptive and did things like stick paper clips in the microphone jacks under the pews so it would make a loud buzzing sound during the church services.

While they never flat-out kicked me out, a point was reached where my parents no longer forced me to attend the church or CYC.

A friend of mine at the time, went to another Church on 92nd and 15th NE. I don't remember the denomination but I went with a couple times and I felt very good about this church. They seemed to be genuine seekers of the truth. I didn't go to church services there but I did go to Bible study, the interesting thing about Bible study there was that they didn't limit religious inquiry to only the Bible nor did they force their interpretations upon us. And, if asked a question they didn't have an answer for they were willing to say they didn't know, but never suggested just accepting it.

That church did not survive financially, eventually it disbanded and the building (church) was sold and became a commercial establishment of some sort.

That was pretty much the end of any formal religious training, although really that church it wasn't so much training as it was exploration and I liked that.

I believe God exists in everything and works through physical laws that were established when everything was first set in motion, which may have been forever. This is pretty inconsistent with aspects of Christian theology which places God as a kind of supreme super-human being "out there" somewhere and actively tweaks things directly. In my view God is in me, in you, in every living thing, in every inanimate thing, every bit of matter, and directs the evolution of the universe, but God directs that evolution through the laws established in the beginning.

In this way, my religious views are not inconsistent with evolution. On the contrary, I believe God works to evolve the universe through evolutionary processes. However, and here is where scientists would not be comfortable with my beliefs, I do not believe that random events are truly random. I believe that statistically, they appear random, but in fact every single occurrence is not random but exquisitely choreographed.

In other words, take the half-life or radium for example. Radium has a half-life if 8600 years approximately, that means that if you take a one gram sample of radium today, lock it away in a vault for 8600 years, and then open the vault now we'll have half a gram of radium. If we lock it up for another 8600 years and then check, only a quarter gram will be left.

We can predict statistically absolutely how much of the radium sample will decay, we can not predict specifically which radium atoms will undergo decay. Scientists say it is random, I say it is not.

Quantum mechanics deals with probabilities. In the classic Newtonian view, an electron orbits an atoms nucleus as a planet orbits the sun. But in quantum mechanics, actually there are clouds of electrons in shells and these electrons have a finite probably at being in any one place at a given time. We can not say exactly where the electron will be at any given time.

Specific quantum events though can determine evolutionary outcome. A radium atom might decay, causing the spontaneous mutation of a gene in a germ cell, which later grows into an individual with new genetic traits that turn out to bestow an advantage and that being then propagates widely. Perhaps such a decay was responsible for the genetic alteration that happened between us and the apes that delayed our brain development allowing our brains to be molded by our environment to a much greater degree.

What I am saying here is that I think "God" is the force that decides what atom decayed, and not just at random but to direct evolution along a specific path, evolution of the entire universe.

This is inconsistent with many Christian tenants. On the other hand, I do believe Jesus was a real person who had a real connection with God that is shared with very few people through history. The son of God thing, salvation, and all of that, well I can't feel comfortable with the literal interpretation, that is, of a son as in a biological son. God is forever, timeless, and has no need to reproduce. Further, the product of the mating of a God and a human would be only half-God at best. But I don't believe it was intended to be taken literally in the sense of biology.

I believe, the story of Genesis, of original sin, what that is telling us is that we have separated ourselves from God, God didn't command that we hide from him, we chose to do so. I believe this is intended to be a metaphor for a real phenomena. I believe we are all part of the all that is, and the all that is, is God. All that is is more encompassing than just the material all that is, the material all that it is, in my view is God's creation but it is not separate from God anymore than our thoughts are separate from us.

When we "sin", and I think "sin" is anything that harms other life forms even though we know we are bringing harm to those life forms, whether those life forms be animals or other people or beings from another galaxy, we feel embarrassed. We do not want others to know the terrible thing we did. This embarrassment is what the metaphor of the embarrassment Adam and Eve felt when they realized they were naked in God's eyes. Adam and Eve dawned fig leaves to cover themselves hiding themselves from God's view, or at least attempting to do so. I think this is metaphoric for how we have cut ourselves off from the all that is. We've formed a psychic barrier so that others can't read our mind and know what we have done, and in so doing cut off our ability to access infinite knowledge and love.

Here is where I think Jesus fits in. The Bible says Jesus was without sin, so this made it possible for him to accept the punishments for our sin. I have some issues with this. I believe because Jesus was without sin, Jesus did not create a barrier between himself and all that is. He was part of all that is directly connected, and I think that is what the son of God idea is really trying to express. Further, if we ask for forgiveness, all of those whom we've harmed, and can be honest and confess our sins, then the need for that barrier no longer exists for us either.

I don't believe this barrier is an absolute, that is that it's either there or not, I believe it's there in degrees. I believe very few humans manage to make it through life entirely sinless or be completely open and forgiving and asking of forgiveness of those they've harmed, but some come much closer than others and they in turn have more access to all that is, the knowledge, the love, and the positive power that is accessible. And when I say power I mean something quite different than the kind of power one might achieve through financial success of military conquest, I mean real power to help others.

But the exact role of Jesus, this is an area that I feel not completely comfortable with, I do believe there is something to the salvation but it's not exactly as portrayed, the portrayal is metaphorical.

I believe that, when it says God made man in his image, we aren't talking about God dolls, we're talking about God's vision. God envisioned us and we were. Prior to space, time, and the universe as we know it, there was no air to propagate sound, so when the Bible says, In the beginning there was the word and the word is God, what that means is God's thoughts. We are, I believe, not made "in" the image of God, we "are" the image of God, God thought us into existence.

All of that said; those familiar with the evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium understand that for evolution to move forward, static comfortable conditions do not accomplish it because organisms evolve to fill all available niches in those conditions and then evolution slows to a crawl because creatures evolved for those conditions are so adapted to them that any spontaneous mutation that occurs only creates less fit individuals.

I believe the same is true of spiritual development and evolution, and punctuations in our spiritual equilibrium must and do happen from time to time to move our spiritual evolution forward. Further, I believe we are approaching such a punctuation.

Most religious texts have some end of the world scenario in them, or at least end of the world as we know it. I do believe the end of the world as we know it is approaching although I don't think it's necessary a bad thing.

It will be a bad thing if we fight the changes we know are necessary. The change that is necessary is that we must love everyone and everything and be willing to act upon that love. Ultimately, for those who survive I believe it will mean a return to Eden, but how many of us survive depends upon our ability to make this change and act upon it, and if we resist then we're going to be dragged through hell on the way getting there.

Either way, the process is going to be extremely weird and massive changes will be involved, but if we go the good route, we will dance with nature while these changes take place, it will be a pleasant, exhilarating, loving experience. On the other hand, if we take the bad approach, continue to fight with each other, disrespect and disregard other life forms on our planet, fight nature, then we're going to take a trip through hell and not all of us will make it out.

God has given me dreams and visions of both paths. We want to choose the positive one, really we do! The negative one is ugly beyond belief. But even the positive path will be strange beyond belief.

God

2006-12-28T01:56:00.000-08:00

Originally, I started a general blog with the intent on covering a number of topics. However, I found as I added more to it that it became too disjointed. To resolve this I've moved to creating separate blogs to discuss specific topics. I will continue to use the general blog to tie them together and also to record day to day experiences in my life that don't seem to fit well within the other specific topic blogs.

I've created to discuss God, does God exist, what is God?